Falwell remark enrages Muslims

Iranian calls for his death

Posted: Sunday, October 13, 2002

By Hussein DakroubAssociated Press

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Shiite Muslim clerics in Lebanon and Iran have reacted with rage at the Rev. Jerry Falwell for calling Islam's prophet a terrorist and an envoy of Iran's supreme leader reportedly called for his death.

Iranian cleric Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestari, addressing weekly Friday prayers in the northwestern town of Tabriz, said Falwell was a ''mercenary and must be killed,'' the Farsi-language daily Abrar reported Saturday.

''The death of that man is a religious duty, but his case should not be tied to the Christian community,'' Shabestari, a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying.

In an interview broadcast last week on the CBS program ''60 Minutes,'' Falwell said: ''I think (Prophet) Muhammad was a terrorist''.

The conservative Baptist minister said he has concluded from reading Muslim and non-Muslim writers that Islam's prophet ''was a violent man, a man of war.''

In Lebanon Saturday, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah called on Muslim countries to respond to Falwell who, he said, had ''infringed on the prophet (Muhammad's) dignity.''

Fadlallah, however, cautioned against resorting to ''physical violence'' against Falwell, saying Islam is ''a religion of mercy and love.''

In a statement issued in Beirut, Fadlallah also urged Muslims worldwide to counter what he called ''a cultural war'' launched against Islam following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Fadlallah, 67, has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks. He is a senior Shiite religious authority and a harsh critic of U.S. policies in the Middle East, a region where Arabs view America as being biased toward Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.

In August, Fadlallah issued a fatwa, or religious edict, banning Muslims from assisting the United States and its allies if they attack Iraq. He also urged Muslims to withdraw their money from U.S. markets for fear they may be frozen or confiscated.

Earlier this week, another Shiite cleric in Iran, Ayatollah Hussein Nouri Hamedani, called on Muslims to cut relations with America. He accused Falwell of implementing ''a Zionist plan'' to cause a clash between Islam and Christianity.

But other Muslim clerics held different opinion.

''Although (Falwell's) opinion is insulting, he can be answered through dialogue so that all ambiguities in his mind are cleared,'' Iranian Ayatollah Hussein Mousavi Tabrizi said.

Tabrizi refused to compare Falwell to British author Salman Rushdie, against whom the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution, issued a death verdict in the 1980s for blaspheming Islam in his book ''Satanic Verses.''

''Rushdie is a symbol of the red line between Islamic countries and the West. But we will not issue a death verdict against the priest. Iran is a country that promotes dialogue among civilizations,'' Tabrizi told The Associated Press on Saturday.